What a thought this was–a detective who can’t shoot a gun, can’t survive a fistfight, and can’t even run away. What could be more original than that? A little old lady who lives in a village!
Joan Hickson was Agatha Christie’s choice to play Miss Marple, and didn’t get to do so until she was as old as Miss Marple. The result was well worth waiting for.
Forget about any other Marples. These are the best.
She manages to see and hear everything…
The more I think of it, the more the idea grows on me: a seven-foot tall Manchurian detective who solves crimes by dipping specially treated bacon strips into the suspects’ drinks…
Nah. Miss Marple’s better. Miss Marple is the best.
It’s Labor Day. Maybe we’ll watch a Miss Marple episode. I mean, of course, the ones starring Joan Hickson. None of the others can compare.
Here’s something that happened five years ago that I just found out about last night–and it has made me very angry.
In 2011 Brian True-May, the creator and executive producer of Midsomer Murders, the internationally-popular British “cozy crime” series, was suspended from his own show after he admitted that he deliberately kept ‘ethnic minorities’ out of the show’s storylines ( http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1366331/Midsomer-Murders-producer-Brian-True-May-suspended-TV-boss-victimised.html ). The series is still running, but Jo Wright is now the executive producer and Mr. True-May is history.
Yes, I know Midsomer Murders contains a fair amount of Christian-bashing. That’s why Patty and I don’t watch it anymore. And no, I’m not saying ethnic minorities should be segregated from the ethnic majority, if there is one.
What I object to most strenuously indeed is that any artist, any creative person, should be subjected to some kind of quasi-criminal “investigation” because he either left out of his creation something which the big-shots thought should be in it, or put something in that the big-shots thought should’ve been left out. Like, if they don’t like the content, they don’t have to publish it.
Midsomer Murders was a big success for years, under True-May’s leadership–maybe because of its idealistic depiction of English village life, which might not have been so idealistic if he hadn’t presented it as he did. But suddenly True-May’s picture of English village life was a little too English for the PC whoopee crowd–and he made matters worse by admitting to an artistic vision which they were content to profit from for as long as it remained unspoken.
Crikey, they’ll be coming after Miss Marple next.
Humanism, socialism… whatever you want to call it, the bottom line is total control of every aspect of human existence by a little cadre of self-anointed experts and philosopher-kings.
Well, I’ve left some things out of my books that I’m never going to put in; and I wonder when they’ll come for me.
We just watched Joan Hickson as Miss Marple in The Mirror Cracked, and once again I’m in awe of Agatha Christie’s creative genius. Nor does it hurt that these English productions starring Hickson are as faithful to Christie’s plots as humanly possible, and that Christie herself chose Ms. Hickson to play Miss Marple–quite a few years before Hickson was old enough to do it. She is absolutely perfect in the role: Miss Marple to the life.
But think of it. You don’t want it to be just another detective story, seen one, seen ’em all. But you don’t want it to be outlandish, either–nothing like a seven-foot-tall sleuth from Manchuria solving crimes by dipping strips of specially treated bacon into the suspects’ drinking glasses.
So you come up with a detective who is physically incapable of violence, physically unable to run away if she’s in danger, and outwardly the most harmless of all creatures–a little old lady who’s lived in a country village all her life, but has, in the words of one police superintendent, “a mind like a meat cleaver.”
How did Christie ever think of this? There’s never been a more believable detective than Miss Marple in all of crime fiction: this sweet little Christian lady who does her devotionals every morning before she gets out of bed, and yet has such a penetrating insight into the sinful human heart. It sounds unbelievable when I write it down like that; but she’s perfectly believable when you read the novels, or watch Joan Hickson bring her to life.
Wonderful artistry. Just wonderful.